Egenera is gaining a foothold in the EMEA market with the purchase of Dublin, Ireland-based Fort Technologies. The acquisition will also add new management features to Egenera's PAN Cloud Director software.

Egenera, which has made its name in the cloud world with management and automation software, has acquired Dublin, Ireland-based Fort Technologies, a cloud lifecycle software provider. This acquisition gives Egenera a stronger foothold in customers, sales and channel partners in the EMEA markets, as well as new management features that it plans to add to its PAN Cloud Director software.

The Fort Technologies employees have already been integrated into Egenera's cloud products group, and the acquired company's CEO, Gerry Murray, is staying on board to head up Egenera's growing EMEA operations.

"The acquisition allows us to help our customers move to the cloud faster and create more enterprise-class, resilient and secure clouds," said Pete Manca, CEO of Egenera, in a prepared statement.

According to Manca, Fort Technologies' approach to cloud management makes the design, deployment and management of IT services as simple as drag-and-drop. That should fit well into Egenera's cloud management and automation solutions. Once the technologies have been properly integrated (likely a quick turnaround), this should present Egenera's partners and customers with an even easier way to get clouds up and running quickly--and then manage them more effectively.

Egenera has been pushing ahead with its cloud management and automation software and even has made inroads by getting certified on vendor technologies including IBM BladeCenter, as was announced back in May.

Clouds aren't getting any less complicated as technologies continue to mature and expand in features, and both partner and customers are looking for easier ways to accelerate their time to market while also making management as simple as possible.

"With the ever-increasing complexity of applications entering our private customer cloud, the management of the underlying infrastructure and services is extremely important. Ease of use and automation will increasingly become a critical factor for our success," said John Fitzgerald, managing director of Interactive Network Communications GmbH, a cloud services provider, in a prepared statement. Fitzgerald noted the products from both Egenera and the newly acquired Fort Technologies have the potential to "significantly reduce" operating costs and shorten time-to-market for services.

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